A Look Back at the Best of Natural Papa 2009

As we close out 2009, I’ve been looking back at the year’s posts and the traffic and link love I’ve received from other blogs, with an eye toward pointing you to the most read articles here. I was pleasantly surprised to notice that according to my WordPress statistics plugin, Natural Papa has now received over 100,000 pageviews. I’m jazzed about that!

In the past year, I’ve learned a lot about using WordPress, the ins and outs of hosting, WordPress themes, and using and participating in social media, and have grown to know quite a few of you on other sites as well. It’s been quite a journey, and most recently, Natural Papa joined the Simple Earth Media network.

I started at Natural Father, on Blogger, back in May of 2008, and then decided to invest in a domain name and hosting in December 2008, changing the name to Natural Papa at that time. I just check some of my other stats for Natural Papa, and quite frankly, I’m blown away by how well this site has done in just a year’s time, considering I don’t write about tech, beer, or babes (haha).

According to Alexa, my overall ranking is 173,530, with a U.S. ranking of 45,557. Google gives us a page rank of 5 for the home page, and Feedburner tells me I’ve got around 300 RSS subscribers. My page on Facebook has 300 fans, and Google Friend Connect lists 74 members of Natural Papa. That’s really cool, and I have all of you to thank for that!

Here’s a recap of the most viewed posts on Natural Papa for 2009:

Our Tiny House Experiment: The nuttiest thing we’ve ever done as a family was to move out of our house and into a one room trailer. A tiny house. Two adults, a four year old, and two cats in a 120 square foot camper.

Recipe: Best Banana Bread Ever: Looking for a super-tasty, quick and easy treat? A healthy snack that even your mother would love? Stop right now and make this banana bread recipe!

Ridiculously Good Pumpkin Spice Cookies: After years of baking and tasting and recipe-tweaking, I’m proud to be able to share this pumpkin spice cookie recipe with the world. I call them Ridiculously Good Pumpkin Spice Cookies, and they are now the standard for fall desserts at Natural Papa headquarters.

7 Essential Superpowers for Dads: One major thing they don’t ever tell you before you become a father is that you need to develop superpowers. You’ll be expected to perform miracles and transform yourself from a mild mannered fellow into a full-on superhero on demand.

Raw Food Treat: Cashew Fudge: This raw food recipe is a huge hit at potlucks and parties. It really hits the spot when you want a sweet chocolate munchie that’s full of nutrition.

Family First Aid Kit: Natural Antibiotics: The best natural topical antibiotics are simple, widely available, and cheap to purchase. They can be used to treat everything from umbilical cords to skinned knees, from splinters and blisters to infected sores, and even athlete’s foot.

10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media: [Guest post from Max Gladwell] For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good. Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments.

It’s Not Called Permissive Parenting: In my humble opinion, giving a child free rein doesn’t seem to be very effective in the long run. I think there’s a middle ground that is respectful to the parents and the child, and that effectively teaches the skills for family living and future involvement with the rest of society.

Circumcision: Will You Make the Cut?: We had our oldest son in the hospital and he was circumcised at birth, partly because we didn’t know any better, and partly because I wanted him to “be like me” (“it’s normal, everyone does it”). Now I know better.

About Derek Markham This surprised me, because it’s not an article, it’s just a page about me. Who knew I was so interesting? I sure didn’t.

Natural Remedies for Earaches: Earaches are a fairly common childhood ailment, one that you can probably take care of at home with natural remedies. You don’t have to run to the doctor if you use some of these home remedies to take care of your child’s earache.

16 Excellent Tiny House Resources: From talking to other people who are looking to either live in a low impact way, or to simply save money, I have found that the tiny house concept is one that really resonates with them. And thanks to the power of the internet, resources for how to make the transition to a micro house, how to build your own, or how to live in one, are only a click away.

As always, don’t hesitate to email me at derek (at) naturalpapa.com if you have any input about the topics you read here, or you’re interested in guest posting, or if you simply want to connect with me.